Having ridden a few races now with my powertap wheels, a rough estimate of my LT (threshold) power is right around 300 watts, I thought I would aim for an average power for this short 10k effort in the 325 watt range. Unfortunately, my legs had other ideas! I ended up averaging 306 watts thanks to the uphill/headwind return portion of the out/back course. I have to figure out a way to work harder on the downhills and go easier on the uphills. Still, I was happy to catch the rider who started 30 seconds in front of me and not get passed by any of the riders behind me. I ended up in 11th place out of close to 30 pro/1/2 riders. Only 1 spot out of the money!

For the evening crit at 6:30PM, heat was again a factor in the race. We had a pretty big field of maybe close to 50 riders for the Pro/1/2 race. I was aggressive and made it into the first good-looking break on the second lap. We had all teams represented, but the larger teams wanted to have more than just one of their riders in the break. So even though we had a good initial 10+ second gap, the field brought us back as some of the riders soft-pedaled their pulls. There was a good counter attack to this move that I believe got away with a few riders. For the next 10 laps, there were numerous attacks as riders tried to bridge across to the move. I went with a few of these moves and initiated one or two myself. These counter attacks, plus amazingly long pulls by John Atkins, kept the break within sight.

I was starting to get pretty tired from attacking/chasing/bridging so I tried to recover and drifted towards the middle/back of the pack. As I started to feel better, I knew I needed to move up so that I might have an opportunity to go with a good chase. Coming through the Start/Finish line a TT1 rider attacked with an Aerocat rider close on his wheel. I saw a slight hesitation at the front and attacked hard to latch onto them. (Looking at the power data, I averaged 490 watts for 30 seconds when bridging up to them). We got away pretty cleanly from the field and started working together. I was happy that they were willing to work with me, but I felt like I was pulling harder and longer than either of them. Eventually, we were joined by two more riders who bridged up to us. This helped us finally close the gap to the lead group after 12 laps of chasing.

Covington crit power map, can you spot the difficult part of the course??

The lead group wasn’t working well together, though, and there were four more riders trying to chase onto us. After a couple laps, we started working well together and the riders caught in the middle slipped back into the pack and our lead grew to about a minute on the pack. With 16 laps to go, Dan Holt attacked hard and got away solo. The chasing duties fell to Aerocat, Thomas Brown, Oneal Samuels, and me. We worked together some, but I was about out of water and starting to cramp just hoping that we would finish the race soon. There was another attack at some point that split the remainder of our break in half and shelled two riders completely out the back. Thomas Brown, Oneal Samuels, Joey Rosskopf, and I were caught out by this attack and began chasing.

Joey had a bunch of teammates up the road so he was along for the free ride. With six laps to go, he attacked our group and I cramped up pretty good trying to stay with the chase. I was able to stay on and when Thomas and Oneal caught Joey, our pace slowed down enough for me to recover. With five laps to go, Joey attacked again and this time only Thomas was in position and able to follow. By this point, we were closing in on the back of the field to lap the field. I helped Oneal some, but I was cramping up pretty good at this point. With three laps to go, Oneal finished closing the gap to the back of the pack at the same time that my right leg completely seized up with a cramp. I stopped pedaling hoping that it would relax quick enough for me to chase back onto the pack, but I had to coast all the way through the start/finish straight before my leg relaxed enough for me to pedal. Even then, I had to pedal easy on that lap as my leg threatened to cramp again. But with two laps to go, I felt better and started chasing to make sure I didn’t get “unlapped” by the field since I had gone so slow with three laps to go. The course was long enough, though, that I was able to make it to the end ahead of the field to take 7th place.